Imagine you’re an employee of an institution, government agency or law firm that has succumbed to the will of the Trump administration. You’re not happy and have to decide what to do: Resign in protest, or out of conscience? Stay on with your head down, perhaps with a mortgage to pay? Remain, with the intention to fight back from within? Many Americans are grappling with this decision. Something similar is confronting artists who perform at Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where President Trump has ousted the leadership, installed himself as chairman and his allies on the board and promised to impose his cultural values. For artists who are appalled by the president’s actions, the question is to perform or not to perform. Several have chosen not to, including the backers of the musical “Hamilton.” Others have gone on with their shows. Music by the man whose work inaugurated the center, Leonard Bernstein, is scheduled to be performed tomorrow. In a guest essay, his children, Nina, Alexander and Jamie, explain why they have chosen to let the works be performed. In essence, they say, it’s what their father, who died in 1990, would have wanted. They let the words of Bernstein himself, one of music’s great communicators, explain — and disclose their own gesture of protest. Here’s what we’re focusing on today:
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